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Introduction: |
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Welcome to Drosophila-speciation-patterns.com!
This is a website developed for the sole purpose of accumulating and maintaining a comprehensive dataset on reproductive isolation and related biological variables in the Drosophila genus. The goal is to include any published data on either prezygotic or postzygotic isolation between any Drosophila species pair. Other variables that are relevant to how reproductive isolation evolves in this genus are included, such as genetic distance between species, their ecological habitats, their geographical distribution and isolation, and their mating behavior.
It is important to emphasize that this website is not intended to be a comprehensive compilation of information on the Drosophila genus and is not meant to compete with other excellent resources on Drosophila biology such as various books on the subject for which you can find links below. We only include a species in the list if something is known about its reproductive isolation from some other species. The purpose is to better understand how speciation and various aspects of reproductive isolation evolve in this genus and what biological variables drive Drosophila to speciate in nature. The hope is that in the future this list will grow, as more data on speciation of Drosophila becomes available.
This project was inspired by the now seminal meta-analyses performed by J. Coyne and A. Orr (Coyne and Orr 1989, 1997), in which they compiled data from the Drosophila literature on prezygotic and postzygotic isolation indexes between species and their genetic distances and whether they were sympatric or allopatric. This meta-analysis led to the identification of several key patterns of speciation in Drosophila, including the now famous pattern of enhanced prezygotic isolation in sympatry.
The present project builds on the original study by expanding the dataset in both breadth and depth across the genus. Several advances have been made. The dataset now includes:
- Information on reproductive isolation for over 650 species pairs, organized by 44 phylogenetic subgroups and complexes.
- Summary of phylogenetic relationships within groups and subgroups.
- Updated information on premating isolation between species pairs, including raw copulation percentages between homotypic and reciprocal heterotypic matings and the type of mating choice tests performed (e.g. single-choice, multiple-choice).
- Updated information on postzygotic isolation between species pairs, including information on the actual sterility and inviability effects in F1 hybrids from the two reciprocal heterotypic matings.
- Information on geographical range sizes of each species (including range maps).
- Updated information on genetic distance (Nei's D) and estimated time of divergence (ETD based on molecular data between species pairs.
- Other data provided includes geographical range overlap between sympatric species (% sympatry), geographical distance between allopatric species, and various aspects of ecology of each species, including information on habitats, eco-zones and breeding hosts of each species.
- Male and female preference indexes (Yukilevich and Peterson 2019)
- Male courtship songs (Yukilevich 2021)
All references used to accumulate this information are provided as downloadable pdfs.
This data is freely available to the Drosophila community. While we have tried to be as comprehensive as possible, some data may have escaped our notice. We encourage users to email us regarding any corrections and additions. If you know of any additional information on these or other aspects of Drosophila biology that you think is relevant or you have specific questions, please email: yukilevr@union.edu (Roman Yukilevich Ph.D.)
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